That's an extreme example, but it's a phenomenon almost as old
as the internet itself: trolling. Examples of trolling range from
the above to the extremely mild winding up of people to draw a
reaction. Even outside of trolling though, discussions routinely
turn into arguments that often turn personal. Are people
genuinely more aggressive, rude and unpleasant online, and if so,
why? And what can we do to counter that, and make the internet a
more tolerant place?

"In the real world people subconsciously monitor the
behaviour of others around them and adapt their own behaviour
accordingly [...] Online we do not have such feedback
mechanisms."

Internet psychologist Graham Jones

Common wisdom dictates that people are more aggressive, rude and
forthright online because they're anonymous and can act as
unpleasantly as they like without immediate consequence. If you're
irritating in real life you risk at best social sanctions and at
worst a physical assault. There's definitely evidence that points
to anonymity as a factor, especially in the internet's early years
when IRC, Usenet and message boards were the norm, but nowadays
Facebook commenting has added a personal touch, seemingly without
significantly curbing the aggression.

Psychologist John Suller wrote a paper on
this in 2004, entitled "The Online Disinhibition
Effect", where he explored six factors that
could combine to change people's behaviour online. These are
dissociative anonymity ("my actions can't be attributed to my
person"); invisibility ("nobody can tell what I look like, or judge
my tone"); asynchronicity ("my actions do not occur in real-time");
solipsistic Introjection ("I can't see these people, I have to
guess at who they are and their intent"); dissociative imagination
("this is not the real world, these are not real people"); and
minimising authority ("there are no authority figures here, I can
act freely"). The combination of any number of these leads to
people behaving in ways they wouldn't when away from the screen,
often positively -- being more open, or honest -- but sometimes
negatively, abusing their fellow internet users in ways they
wouldn't dream of offline.

Internet psychologist Graham Jones believes that to a
certain extent the kind of aggressive behaviour often seen online
happens in the real world. "Having said that, there is a feature of
the online world that makes such negative behaviour more likely
than in the real world," he says. "In the real world people
subconsciously monitor the behaviour of others around them and
adapt their own behaviour accordingly... Online we do not have such
feedback mechanisms."

These feedback mechanisms can be body language, facial
expressions or more obvious cues, but a recent study at the Univeristy of Haifa revealed that those who
had to maintain eye contact were half as likely to be hostile as
those who had the eyes hidden. The lead author of the study, Noam
Lapidot-Lefler, believes this is because eye contact "helps you
understand the other person's feelings, the signals that the person
is trying to send you."

Although free speech advocates will wince, communities
that are well moderated seem to be more civil
places

I spoke to Garry Crawford, Professor of Sociology at the
University of Salford to get more of a sociological perspective.
For example, how much of online aggression is based on the relative
newness of internet etiquette compared to society's conventions
that have been established over thousands of years? They are
"probably less well-defined and rigid than many other social
encounters", he says. "To some extent, people are still figuring
out what is appropriate and acceptable on the internet. However, in
doing so, people draw on and adapt existing and related frames of
reference and patterns of behaviour. For example, it has always
been easier to be bold or blunt in a letter than it is in
face-to-face communication." Trolling is to an extent therefore, he
says, "a digital version of a poison pen letter". The difference,
he points out, is that the speed at which people spit out their
venom online doesn't allow time for reflection or self-censorship,
and even less time to consider the consequences or who might end up
reading their heat-of-the-moment remarks.

Jones agrees that the newness of the medium could be a factor:
"Over time we may see reductions in trolling and so on as people
realise it is unacceptable and also as others "police" the networks
more."

Although free speech advocates will wince, communities that are
well moderated seem to be more civil places. There is a parallel
here with another sociological phenomenon: Broken Windows Theory.
Coined in 1982, the theory posits that areas hit hard by vandalism
will encourage more vandalism, as it is seen as fitting behaviour
for the environment. Can this be applied to online environments
too? Would a user think twice about pejoratively calling a video
"gay" on YouTube if there weren't already hundreds of other users
casually dropping homophobic insults? Crawford draws a comparison
to the state of English football in the 1970s and 80s: "English
football got a reputation as a violent place, as a site of frequent
hooligan outbursts. The subsequent press and public focus on
football hooliganism then only reinforces and helps solidify the
idea of the English football stadium as a regular and legitimate
site of violence. The internet does not create aggressive
behaviours, just like football doesn't create hooligans. It is just
certain places become seen as legitimate sites for that aggression
and, similarly, we become more aware and more sensitised to looking
for aggressive behaviour in those spaces.

There are laws that deal with extreme trolling, but obviously
the police can't (and shouldn't) cover every corner of the
internet, so other than moderation and censorship, what can be
done? Jones looks to offline social changes for inspiration,
another aspect of life that is criminal but near impossible to
effectively police: "Rather like drink-driving, the best way of
dealing with online negative behaviour is to make it socially
unacceptable."

The paradox here, I suggest to him, is that if online trolls are
seeking a reaction, then surely underlining the social taboo
they're breaking is more likely to make it a tempting proposition?
After all, drink drivers aren't looking for attention, but for
convenience and self-control. Jones replies that there may be
another psychological principle at play: the "ingroup-outgroup"
concept: "People seeking a reaction will only get one if they feel
they are part of the social group in which they are engaging. As
soon as they feel an "outsider" to the world of Twitter, say, they
will feel they are not getting the reaction they want. As soon as
the social rules and accepted etiquette make them feel "outgroup"
they won't be receiving the desired reaction."

Being able to dismiss online aggression as "bad people doing
things under the cloak of anonymity" is a nice simple answer, but
it's clearly an incomplete snapshot. In a strange way though,
that's comforting: it would be more chilling to accept that society
has only developed as it has because people fear the consequences
of following their nastier instincts.